After spending several hours attempting to track down and fix all the errors in the various config files that XAMPP managed to totally stuff up (by inserting \ insead of / and leaving off drive letters), I still kept getting errors all over the place when trying to access web pages I copied there. As for phpMyAdmin, it absolutely refused to allow me to import any databases or run any SQL commands at all.

The next step was to uninstall the Apache and mySQL services from XAMPP and try an install of WAMP5 instead.

WAMP5 installed much easier than XAMPP did since it did not stuff up the config files. That saved me the time I had spent manually rebuilding the config files in XAMPP and got me to the same point with WAMP5 in tem minutes that it had taken over five hours to get to with XAMPP. Unfortunately the install was still corrupted in exactly the same way as the “repaired” XAMPP install was and still refused to allow me to run any SQL.

One clue to another thing that needed fixing was when I tried to use my browser on that computer to access my blog on the web site. It popped up a message that cookies were disabled. I eventually tracked this down to third party cookies being disabled in the Firewall software. Unfortunately another attempt to use phpMyAdmin in WAMP5 still gave the same error.

Further investigation showed that the WAMP5 install is in fact not running either PHP or SSI at all on pages that the .htaccess file says it should be running them on. Obviously the config files in WAMP5 are just as stuffed as the XAMPP ones were just in a different way.

At this point I will obviously be deleting the WAMP5 garbage off of my computer. The only question that remains is whether to hope that fixing the cookie problem will actually fix XAMPP if I reinstall that and rebuild all the stuffed config files. I will probably use the simpler option and save myself wasting any more time by installing Apache, PHP, mySQL, and phpMyAdmin separately. The individual installs on my other computer were certainly 1000% simpler than either the XAMPP or WAMP5 messes turned out to be.

Tags: Apache, firewall, mySQL, mySQL services, PHP, phpMyadmin, WAMP, XAMPP